David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

BEIJING, China – “President Obama, as the father of two girls yourself, please ask President Hu Jintao of China to tell this daughter where her father is…If the Chinese government has murdered my father, I beg President Obama to ask President Hu to let us bury him.” These are the desperate words from the daughter of China’s leading Human Rights attorney, whose profession has become another example of how China silences critics.

As the Wall Street Journal reports, Mr. Gao hasn’t had the privilege of courts and jails but has simply disappeared, without any official word on the circumstances of what his family and most observers believe to be his detention by the government.

In 2009, in the article “Dark Night, Dark Hood and Kidnapping by Dark Mafia,” which was published on the Internet, Gao Zhisheng described the atrocious torture inflicted on him by police during his imprisonment in 2007, including cruel beatings, shocking his gentiles with electric batons, damaging his eyes by blowing cigarette smoke into them for hours, inserting toothpicks into his penis, etc. Gao’s exposé shocked the international community. (Epoch Times)

The teenage daughter, Grace Geng, one of China’s most respected human rights advocates has pleaded to President Barack Obama for help finding answers to questions few can answer.

Grace Geng, her mother and brother finally fled China with her mother last year, and are now living in the United States.

In an open letter to the president, saying her father had been tortured and she too had been beaten by police and barred from going to school, 17 year-old Grace, wrote a letter published by the Wall Street Journal with the words: “Six months ago last week the Chinese government kidnapped my father. He was abducted for exercising his right to freedom of speech.”

In what has been five years of tracked oppression by the hands of the world’s leading economy, Gao Zhisheng, since: 2005: authorities have closed down Gao Zhisheng’s law practice; Dec 2006: Convicted of subversion and sentenced to house arrest; Sept 2007: Says he was tortured during a period of detention; Jan 2009: Disappears; last seen accompanied by security officials; Mar 2010: Reappeared for a month before disappearing again.

Accompanied by Beijing lawyers Teng Biao and Li Heping, Gao Zhisheng’s eldest brother Gao Zhiyi recently reported the case to Xiaoguan Police Station in Beijing’s Chaoyang District, but police refused to register the case or take a written statement. (BBC)

In an interview with Sound of Hope Radio Network, Li Heping said that communist authorities often illegally torture petitioners, political dissidents, and rights defenders. Citizens are arrested for seeking redress of grievances. Lawyers who defend them are also implicated and persecuted.

Mr. Gao’s circumstance alongside Liu Xiaobo’s, the jailed academic awarded the Nobel Peace Prize months ago, are patterns of the Chinese Communist Party’s increasing persecution of human rights defenders in China.

Li Heping worries that the Chinese people cannot do anything about the communist state’s illegal practices. “Another way to put it is that this is the regime’s scoundrel way. What can you do about it?” 

For more information, please see:

Wall Street Journal – Again, Where Is Gao Zhisheng? – 28 October 2010

BBC – Daughter pleads for missing China lawyer Gao Zhisheng – 28 October 2010

The Epoch Times – Beijing Police Refuse to Register Gao Zhisheng’s Missing Case – 24 October 2010

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

HANOI, Vietnam – In South Vietnam, the police arrested two bloggers in a new crackdown on public criticism against the state. The government’s politically motivated prosecutions of independent bloggers and critics of the government violates their rights guaranteed under international law and spotlights the country’s poor human rights record, Human Rights Watch said.

The current governing Communist Party is planning to hold its five-year congress in January, when party leaders will be selected in a secretive election process and will map the country’s course for the next five years. The “pre-Party Congress crackdown” have heightened their scrutiny and government critics are being targeted.

“The Vietnam government is shameless in constructing charges and rationales to keep peaceful critics like Dieu Cay behind bars,” Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director of Human Rights Watch, said in a statement. ”

It was the latest in a series of rights violations against politically-oriented bloggers, Human Rights watchdogs said.

“In a country where the state controls all traditional media outlets, independent bloggers have emerged as important sources of news, information, and social commentary,” Robertson said. “The government should embrace the key role that independent bloggers are playing in society instead of harassing and imprisoning them.”

“They’re just making it up as they go along,” he said.

“The Vietnam government is shameless in constructing charges and rationales to keep peaceful critics like Dieu Cay behind bars,” said Phil Robertson, deputy Asia director at Human Rights Watch. ”

Authorities submitted an unofficial statement saying Dieu Cay, the name for a traditional pipe, was being investigated under Penal Code Article 88, which covers “propaganda against the state”.

Dieu Cay is the founder of an independent group called the Club of Free Journalists. The tax charges were widely viewed as a pretext to muzzle his criticism of the government and its policy toward China. On October 18^th, police in Ho Chi Minh City also arrested Phan Thanh Hai, another member of the group. Two other members, Ta Phong Tan and Uyen Vu, both bloggers, were placed under intrusive police surveillance at their homes. Police also briefly detained a democracy activist, Do Nam Hai, on October 19 according to the New York based Human Rights watch dogs.

Vietnam bans opposition political parties and independent media require all associations, religious groups and trade unions to come under government control.

The 17th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), which begins on October 28^th in Hanoi, provides an excellent opportunity for ASEAN heads of state and other governments to raise concerns about the persecution of government critics, Human Rights Watch said.

Dieu Cay, charged with tax evasion was sentenced to a 30 month jail sentence after inspiring people to protest at the Olympic torch ceremonies in Ho Chi Minh City shortly before Beijing Olympics. Cay criticized China’s policies in Tibet and Vietnam’s handling of the disputed Spratly islands in the South China Sea.

For more imformation, please see:

Human Rights Watch –Vietnam: Free Peaceful Bloggers and Government Critics – 22 October 2010

Qatar Tribune – Vietnam blogger’s jail-term ends, but yet to be freed – 26 October 2010 

GMA News – Vietnam arrests 2 bloggers over anti-govt remarks – 26 October 2010

David L. Chaplin II
Impunity Watch, Asia

In what was a pivotal test for Afghanistan’s inexperienced democracy spell business as usual. Recent evidence of fraud has presented the questionably elected President Karzai with a stained reputation.

After the devastating announcement on Monday that the Afghanistan’s Independent Election Commission released of ballot-box stuffing and bribery have tainted the vote.

Meanwhile, the UN-backed Afghan Electoral Complaints Commission is investigating more than 4,000 formal complaints.

Since then 1.3 million votes of the total of 5.6 million ballots have been cancelled out because of fraud.  That means about 23 percent of the total votes were tossed out, the election commission said Wednesday.

Afghan President Hamid Karzai pledged to cut corruption and increase transparency after he was re-elected in August 2009 election that was later deemed fraudulent by the United Nations and other vote-monitoring organizations.

More than 220 candidates are being investigated for fraud in the election, turnout for which was around 40%.

More than 2,500 candidates stood for 249 seats in the lower house of parliament, the Wolesi Jirga. Sixty-eight seats have been set aside for women.

The current parliament is stacked with former warlords and power brokers, and many of the candidates in September’s election have ties to Afghanistan’s old elite.

Final results are not expected before the end of the month once poll investigators finish their work.

“Turnout is around 5,600,000, the valid vote is 4,265,347, and the invalid vote is around 1, 300, 000,” Fazil Ahmad Manawi, head of the Independent Election Commission (IEC), said on Wednesday.

Deputy chief of election commission, Zekria Barikzai, cautioned that the number of votes thrown out was similar to the votes thrown out in the presidential election which cast Karzai the victor.  “In parliamentary election some of the powerful local people tried to influence the process,” Barikzai said.

Paul Wood, BBC News, said despite the throwing out of 1.3 million votes, there will probably be no rush by the international community to condemn the election.

Ultimately, the poll’s measure of success will be how it affects the stability of the country. There was widespread intimidation during the vote, with Taliban insurgents threatening people not to take part.

Many observers had hoped that the parliamentary elections would show the Afghan government’s commitment to reforming its corrupt bureaucracy.

“These elections will do little to alter Afghanistan’s system of patronage politics, and will certainly not alter the balance of power,” a Western official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said.

The official said the parliamentary poll represented “politics as usual, just as corrupt and just as violent as last year”.

It is an outcome that NATO and the international community can live with and so these elections will no doubt be judged a success, said Wood.

Afghanistan lacks political parties and parliamentary blocs form according to ethnic or geographical alliances.

Despite weak parties, powerful patronage networks, and entrenched corruption, the Wolesi Jirga (lower house of parliament) acts as a check on the power of President Hamid Karzai.

For more information, please see:

Al Jazeera English –Afghan officials cancel 1.3m votes – 20 October 2010

BBC – Afghanistan rules 1.3m paralimentary votes are invalid – 20 October 2010

CNN World – More than 20 percent of vote thrown out in Afghan election – 20 October 2010

Tibetan students marched against government policy to use Chinese language in class (Photo courtesy of Free Tibet)

By Joseph Juhn
Impunity Watch Report, Asia

BEIJING, China – More than 1,000 Tibetan students marched to protest against unconfirmed government policies to mandate the exclusive use of Chinese language in classes.

The peaceful rally took place in and around Tongren, known as Rebkong in Tibetan, where it has recently witnessed widespread anti-government rioting in the spring of 2008. At the time, scores were arrested and a crackdown waged against Buddhist monasteries, capturing the world’s attention before the Summer Olympics in Beijing that year.

Some monks were to be seen amongst protestors on Tuesday, who, alongside students, shouted “equality of ethnic groups” and “freedom of language,” according to the International Campaign for Tibet. Free Tibet, the London based campaign group, and U.S.-funded broadcaster Radio Free Asia estimated the total number of participants at anywhere from 1,000 to 7,000.

Students from half a dozen schools gathered and marched together, chanting slogans against unconfirmed plans to supplant the use of Tibetans.

One of the teachers who also participated in the march said police did not intervene and students were not penalized by school administrators for partaking in the march.

“The students marched peacefully. Their only demand was for continued use of their mother tongue,” he said.

Although ethnic “Han” Chinese consists of more than 95 percent of Chinese population, there are currently 55 ethnic minority groups officially recognized by the government. Tibetans are one of them. Language, among other things, has been an emotional and complicated issue in Tibetan and other ethnic minority areas under Chinese rule.

While the government defends these policies by saying they aim to spur economic growth in the largely poor areas and better integration, many Tibetans fear the development of their areas and the migration of majority Han Chinese to them could destroy their traditional culture and ethnic identity.

The town’s schools use Mandarin and Tibetan alongside each other, and many teachers said there has not been official orders to switch entirely to Chinese. However, they said there are rumors and unconfirmed reports of a planned change in policy, which authorities never clarified.

“The Chinese are enforcing reforms which remind me of the Cultural Revolution,” another teacher said.

“This reform is not only a threat to our mother tongue, but is in direct violation of the Chinese constitution, which is meant to protect our rights.”

For more information, please see:

The New York Times – China: Tibetan Students March To Protest Education Policies – 21 October 2010

BBC News – Tibetan students in China protest over language policy – 20 October 2010

Kansas City – Tibetan students protest use of Chinese in classes – 20 October 2010